Dr. Liz Murray

Dr Liz Murray is a former doctor, multi award winning artist, founder of Mortal And Strong, and UN Women UK delegate. After being a medical doctor for over ten years, Liz left a clinical role following a diagnosis of complex autoimmune conditions and founded the charity and art campaign Mortal And Strong. Liz is known for her mission to embrace the arts to address health inequalities and works as a keen health advocate to support women’s health. Liz began using art to address social stigmatisation of disease during the Covid-19 pandemic seeing her as a finalist in the international VAO exhibition. Liz continues to paint fine art oil paintings inspired by exploring mortality, life and messages of strength.

About Dr. Murray’s work “Two Fridas Divided By Gender”:

Inspired by Frida Kahlo’s ‘Two Frida’s’ in which the original painting explored Frida herself distinguished by time, culture and heartbreak. Frida was one of the first artists to use her art to explore her own health issues, feminist messages and was under appreciated during her time. The synergies of Frida’s story then and what I personally explore through my own work were something too poignant not to include for this important piece. Expanding the inspiration and synergies with Bethany and Hannah, the two sisters who are raising awareness of the gender inequalities in sudden cardiac arrest. I have repeated the two Frida’s but depicted them as men, the ‘men’ sitting in a clear sky, hearts in tact and connected to an AED. Leaving the two Frida’s sat with open, broken hearts, wires cut under a stormy sky. I wanted to truly capture the gross unequal statistic that women are less likely to survive a SCA because of their breasts impacting on people’s confidence to use AED pads.